As the title estates, what are your opinions on those? What qualifes as one, have you ever felt it, what impressions does it inspire on you? I'm asking because I went through one that might qualify yesterday, and if it does, I can only say that these experiences are overrated.

Oh, and one little spoiler: despite what the title makes you think, or how dire the situation, the twist is that I survive in the end like the main character of a TV show. I am, after all, several of my friend's favorite fictional character.

Short story, we were driving on a German highway when all of a sudden we got a flat tyre. Bam! The driver started to break, but the car started doing wider and wider S movements. We happened to be on top of a bridge, and at one point we were heading straight (perpendicular to the road) towards the little fence that would probably not be enough to stop us. I distinctly remember calmly calculating my chances of survival if we fell from the bridge (turned out to be around 4m high, I later noticed). But the driver reacted on time and pulled out a 270º sliding turn (which, I believe, must have been really cinematic from outside) and the car finally stopped. We were safe... ly looking directly at cars approaching at top speed while stuck on the middle lane of the highway. I gotta say, German's lack of speed limit when driving on highways didn't seem like such a good idea to me at that time. The driver again reacted quite well and she re-started the car on time to get it to the border of the road, but perpendicularly and taking about half of the leftmost lane. We were stuck in that position for a while until we got off and I went waving hands to get cars to slow down so as to give time for maneuvering the car into a safer position.

Is this a near death experience? Well, I thought I was a goner a couple of times, I think you can tell when from my tale above. But I don't remember having time to feel scared, no life passing before my ears or anything of the like. It most certainly wasn't life changing, I don't intend to stop using eurostop and I don't feel like going back home faster. It's just that shit happens.

I do have to say however, getting a nail on the weel and losing control of the vehicle on a highway is shit that happens. It happens to other people, this time it happened to me. No big deal. However, having the road basically to ourselves while it happened, considering the traffic levels I saw while waiting for the emergency services? That was a freaking miracle. I said it back there, we were extremely lucky, and if I believed in God I would have fallen to my knees right there. Even then, I couldn't help saluting the omamori for safe travel I bought in Kyoto that I always keep on my backpack and I had been flaunting around 5 minutes prior to the accident.

Anyway, important thing is nobody got hurt, nobody was worried about me (because nobody knew I was taking that car yesterday) and I didn't have to pay for the repairs.

Wow! Lucky escape - and yes, considering the traffic on our highways it is a miracle you survived. Glad you made it!

I had an interesting experience in my childhood where I was scaling a cliff face with a 12-15m drop to the sea and jaggy rocks below. Of course, being 13 years old, I didn't give a fuck.

At least I didn't until I missed my footing and lost my grip on the rock face. Fortunately, my father was there just above on the ledge and grabbed my t-shirt just in time and long enough for me to regain my grip. It was sheer luck that my brains weren't splattered all over the rocks below.

Almost 20 years on and I still haven't forgotten...

Right now I'm waiting for my annual blood test back, I'm kind of having one at this moment. :D

Not to bemoan what you went through and as much as I have experienced I've never really incurred anything like that and I can't say that I want too. My heart goes out to you.

A1, per chance?

That autobahn is a fucking death trap at the best of times, especially now during holiday season. We get the worst of it here in Lübeck.

I have no idea, tbh. Whatever a GPS said it was the most direct route from Gent to Bremen. I do know we stopped in Antwerp and we passed by a land claiming to be Holland but had neither tulips nor windmills (fake!!!)

I never had a full blown 'near death experience' with 'light at the end of the tunnel' and such. But I had some close calls with death as well (one sickness related, some climbing related). The most recent and most spectacular one, however, was a 'almost plane crash'. A few year back, I was flying back from Moscow to Frankfurt from a conference. The weather was really bad and when we were approaching Frankfurt we got the notice from the pilot that Frankfurt was closed for a heavy thunderstorm - but that we didn't have enough fuel to be re-routed to Stuttgart, so we had to land nonetheless.

...through a thunderstorm. On a closed airport. With so little fuel that it didn't even suffice to reach Stuttgart, which is very close to Frankfurt. These things he didn't say, but it were the thoughts going through my head. Plus, if we have so little fuel, we also only had one try. No starting through and trying again when something went wrong.

The wind was very heavy, thunderclouds from the inside really look interesting and quite violent and the plane was shaking all over. Then we cleared the cloud and could see the landing lights through the rain already very, very close. When heavy gusts of wind hit the plane from the side. The plane tilted over to one side, the pilot counteracted, so that we were swaying from one side to the other. Somehow an eerie calm came over me in that moment and while half of the passengers were praying I suggested a bet to my seat neighbour which wing would strike the ground first. (he didn't think that funny at all, somehow) A proper landing just seemed very unlikely. Especially since the landing strip was not exactly in front of us but the plane was flying somewhat diagonally (necessary to offset the strong side wind).

Then the pilot gave full thrust once more to balance the swaying and we hit the ground at full speed. Then the counter-thrust came and we were being pressed quite painfully into the safety belts. The plane stopped just before the end of the runway (and had to be towed back later). - But it did stop, the wheels had been the first part to hit the ground and they did hold. I've never experienced such a frenetic and honest applause after a landing. A stewardess I talked to admitted that she hadn't thought we would survive either and that even though she (unlike us passengers) knew that the pilot was a very experienced former military pilot. It really was an amazing feat of flying and it was the most exciting landing I ever experienced!

Next time tell Q to give you a better car with better tires. Personally, I only consider near death experiences, shit you experience while dying, only minutes or hours from death. When everything gets blurry and really bright. When you don't even have the energy to sit in front of your computer. When you hear nurses and doctors talking about your death.

Was close to drowning a couple of times when I was a kid. Got saved in time. I was a kid at the time so the whole life flashing before my eyes didn't happen and I definitely wasn't smart enough to be afraid after, but it left a mark. Right now I'm fine with going into water, love it really, but if it goes above my head I start to panic a bit.

I have problems in games with underwater sections especially if it's a first person game. I struggle to get through them or even have to quit if it's too much.

I thought this thread was going to be about "seeing a shining light" religious crap. Thank goodness.

Why thank goodness? What is so offensive about seeing a shining light? LOL

When I was like 12- 13, my brother my cousin and I did roller blade training with a professionnal group in Paris.
I wasn't really talented, so I drifted off out of control, going to the nearest metro entrance (It has stairs and the metro rail so it would've probably been fatal if not heavily damaging). A young french girl (younger then me) flew and pushed me out of the metro entrance...
I'm probably alive thanks to her, and I don't even know her name :-)

I had a nasty accident a few years back, from which I escaped unscathed only by sheer luck and german engineering, and in those last moments before the crash time really slows down to a crawl. Even after 6 years I remember almost every detail, every turn of the wheel, every thought. Creepy, since I don't remember what I had yesterday for breakfast :D.

But I did see a shining light. Several, in fact. All the incoming cars were flashing their front lights.